


Our Worlds Will Be Worth More

by Kazzy



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Futurefic, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 06:10:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/988636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kazzy/pseuds/Kazzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>One year to the day of Tommy’s death and Laurel wakes to find Oliver lying beside her, staring at the ceiling, eyes blank, mouth set.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Worlds Will Be Worth More

**Author's Note:**

> It's Laurel Appreciation Week on Tumblr (#LaurelWeek). Day two is 'A Laurel moment of tears'. So this has been sitting on my harddrive for a while because the melodrama in it is enough to hurt my head. But given the prompt I decided to go ahead and post it.
> 
> Written prior to most of the spoilers being released so it won't be consistent with season two. AU-ish as it stands.

One year to the day of Tommy’s death and Laurel wakes to find Oliver lying beside her, staring at the ceiling, eyes blank, mouth set. He doesn’t acknowledge her straight away and when she reaches for his hand under the covers she finds it clenched into a fist.

This is a new thing, this relationship that they’re building, even if ‘new’ seems a strange word to apply to them. But they’re trying communication and trust to mix in with the desire and the love, building something stronger than they’ve managed before. She’s seen parts of who he is that she’s never seen before and letting him past walls she’s kept up in the past to stay safe.

And it’s working. Passion has never been a problem for them, their whirlwind of breaking up and getting back together and falling into bed together is not the issue. Love is something they’ve had since they were very young. She’d say too young to understand, but even then she knew what he was to her; and even through the anger, the bitterness and the grief she’d still loved him. But now there is a peace, too.

Until this week. Every day the weight has just pulled at them making her snappy and cold and him withdrawn and silent. Both of them have thrown themselves into their respective jobs, working long hours in a mutual effort of avoidance to match any prior attempt. But she’d fallen apart the night before, exhaustion and grief dragging her down to a point where she couldn’t contemplate facing a world that doesn’t care Tommy is dead (though they remember the day, they’re never going to forget it).

So she’d called in sick and asked Oliver to stay with her, hidden away from the world. He’d caved too quickly considering she knew he has meetings to go to that he really shouldn’t miss and is in the middle of tracking a couple twisted individuals.

They’d had sex for the first time in nearly two weeks, in his bed, in the dark, breathing far too ragged, damp cheek pressed against damp cheek. And when they were done she felt worse than before, awash with guilt and shame and grief, eyes burning but no tears falling. She’d slept poorly, aware of him tossing and turning beside her, mumbling indistinctly through his dreams.

And now when she reaches for him, he turns to her with bloodshot eyes, shadowed even beyond the light filtering through the curtains. “Hey,” she says her voice rough.

He shakes his head, and only then does she notice his tears. She reaches for him and he comes without resistance, burying his face in the crook of her neck, wrapping around her so tightly, breathing becomes difficult. In an attempt at comfort, futile though it might be, she runs her hands down his hair and back, kisses the top of his head and holds back her own grief.

She’s seen him cry before. Like her, he feels emotions deeply and they’ve known each other long enough that hiding is worthless. But there’s a world of difference from a few shed tears to the way he is shaking against her, gasping through his sobs. The last time she saw him this upset, they were twelve, barely friends, but had still ended up on the same street corner at the same time to witness a car accident that claimed three lives.

After the shock had worn off, after Laurel had thrown up twice, the scene playing on constant loop in front of her eyes they’d both sat side by side at the police station waiting for his parents to arrive. She’d been felt blank and lost, queasy, scared. But he’d sobbed, not bothering with pride or stoicism.

She hasn’t seen him cry for Tommy. She isn’t arrogant enough to assume that he doesn’t feel the loss as deeply as she does. Even if she had, this now is a vivid reminder that he’s lost just as much as her, and that his capacity for dealing with that loss isn’t necessarily as great. At twelve she’d known about violence and fear and death – she is after all the daughter of a cop – but she’s not sure how much he knew of the dark parts of the world.

And now, perhaps, he knows too well.

Minutes or hours, she’s not sure, but time passes and he calms, his grip on her slackens and his breathing evens out. When she looks down, his eyes are closed. Gently she detaches herself, she doesn’t want to disturb the only peaceful sleep he’s had in days with her own grief. But she sits on the edge of the bed, not sure she has the strength to stand, presses a hand to her mouth to muffle her sobs as her tears begin to fall.

Maybe she wasn’t as careful or as quiet as she thought, maybe he wasn’t sleeping as deeply, but she’s in his arms before she even realises he’s moving. And it’s her turn to be comforted, to cling to him as she sobs into his chest. 

Unlike her, he murmurs to her. He apologises over and over, he tells her he loves her and that he wishes he could have saved Tommy for her and he’s sorry. She wants to stop him, to argue but they’ve had this discussion so many times in the last year, tried to absolve each other of blame but neither is ready to let go of their guilt.

Finally she cries herself out and finds herself lying in his arms, tucked against his side, tired and worn, empty, her nose is blocked, her eyes itchy, salt stinging against her skin. She looks up to see fresh tear tracks on his face, so she cups his cheek and rubs her thumb across his cheek bone. He leans in and kisses her, at first it’s soft and sweet but it rapidly becomes hot and hard. His tongue sweeps across her lips, her hand slides under the waist band of his shorts and she slings one leg over his and runs her foot down his leg.

He pushes them both up so he’s propped on the pillows and she’s straddling his lap, the covers tucked around their shoulders. This is a long way from one of the usual positions but it’s very intimate, with plenty of room for touch. She decides she likes it and maybe they’ll try it again sometime, rocking against him lightly.

Later they’re both sticky and damp, but she slides so she’s sitting on the mattress, tucks her head under his chin and rests against his chest. Under her cheek his breathing is slowing down, his heart still pounding, he smells of sweat, traces of cologne, sex and her.

The knot of anguish in her chest has eased a little, though she suspects that the grief will probably never leave her. Tommy is going to sit next to Sarah and she’s never going to be able to think of them without knowing that they’ve been taken from her long before she should have lost them. But she’s learned to focus on the good things: Sarah’s joy, her smile and her often unexpected but genuine kindness; Tommy’s sweetness and caring, so often buried behind the loud party guy, how he was actively trying to make himself a better person.

She misses him. She’s lived with Sarah’s death for nearly seven years – and that’s a fresh ache of its own – but Tommy is still a gaping wound. He’s been gone a year and every day takes her one further from the last time he was alive. One day it’ll be seven years from his death and thirteen from Sarah’s, Laurel will be thirty five and they won’t have aged a day.

She has no idea where she’d be if Tommy was still alive. And the question of who she’d be with is not worth asking, because that’s not what she means. She just wants him to alive, happy and whole. She just wants him to see him smile.

And it’s bad form to be thinking about another man while you’re in bed with your boyfriend, but she suspects that Oliver understands. So when he speaks, she answers without thinking.

“Laurel?” His voice is pitched soft and low. Quiet enough that it wouldn’t wake her if she was asleep.

“Hmm?” She tilts her head back her so she can look at him.

With care he lifts her chin a little higher so he can kiss her again. “Are you all right?”

The answer to that is ‘no’, of course, not when she is haunted by so many ghosts. “I wish Tommy was here.” And maybe that is a bad way to phrase it, but she doesn’t mean ‘here’ and ‘here in this bed’ – necessarily – she means in general. She just hopes he understands.

“Yeah,” he says with a soft exhale. “Yeah.”

They stay like that for a long time, Laurel leaning on his chest, listening to his breathing and the steady beat of his heart, the blanket still tucked securely around them.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from an OpShop song 'No Ordinary Thing'. The full line is 'Our worlds will be worth more than living once in this lifetime'.
> 
> Neither the song, nor Arrow belong to me.


End file.
